


Thirteen Years Old And You Reek Of Murder

by l3lackbird



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, F/M, Five Is Dramatic, Grief/Mourning, No Incest, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, The Umbrella Academy (TV) Spoilers, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark-centric, Trans Diego Hargreeves, Trans Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-03-02 19:58:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18817945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/l3lackbird/pseuds/l3lackbird
Summary: Five wraps another bandage around his arm, securing it tightly with a huff and furrowed eyebrows. His face shines with sweat and grime with a cut on his forehead that leaks red. “You need to get yourself together,” he grumbles.Tony chuckles. There’s lots of things he can do. Built a suit out of nothing, defeated an android of his own creation, and plenty of other fabulous things. But.. saving his kid, his successor, Peter, was not one of them. Getting himself together is another.“You’ll be the first to know,” he promises, definitely not thinking about how Five and Peter have the same ‘I’m tired of your bullshit’ face. Five isn’t a replacement for Spiderling.Not at all.———————————An alternative universe where Five transports himself into the MCU, right in Nebula and Tony’s ship after Thanos wins. Read how he works on getting back home, but ends up caught up in another apocalypse. At least he earns new family members along the way.





	1. You look like my kid if he was a psychopath.

Five breathed in thickly as he tilted his head up and stared at the flickering of the appearing portal over their heads. A startlingly blue, shining so brightly that it seared his eyes, and he felt the tremble start in his bones as he concentrates.

Equations flew through his mind, carrying the x and subtracting the density of the air around them, though there’s less of one percent of a chance of this working. There’s too many variables. Too much that could go wrong.

He gripped Allison’s and Diego’s hands in his. Wind whipped his hair, tugged on his blazer, and he bit out a shout as he felt time squeeze around them.

Time is a fickle creature, neither living or dead, with a wicked smile and nasty sense of humor. It dug its nails in his organs while it laughed in the form of the building crumbling around them and squeezed his neck so hard he wondered if this is how Allison felt.

He heard Luther yell out as he looked up at the portal just as Five, his deep voice being a welcoming sound against the tense panic Five felt crawling up his spine.

He brought his chin down and looked to his siblings, wanting to see them as they undergo through the timeline. It’s not because he wanted his last view to be of his brothers and sister, since they _were_ going to make it _._ He wouldn’t fail- he _couldn’t_ fail, not now, now when he was so close to having his family back.

His eyes widened as time wrapped around them, raising his voice against the noise, “Hold on! It’s gonna get messy!”

Five pushed himself harder than he ever had before, farther than when he was surrounded by the dead bodies of his siblings and wanted nothing more than to return, harder than when he was in his own body and struggled to open a portal back to them, and then, as flames raged towards them.

They disappeared.

————————————————

“Fuck, no. Neb. Come on.” Tony sighs and runs a worn hand through his greasy hair, feeling a loss as the alien, blue woman stares at him as she crushes a wire tightly in her fist.

A blue wire he specifically told her not to pull, yet she still wrapped her fingers around the thin rubber and yanked hard enough that sparks flew. Goddammit. If she really is like this for the rest of the time, he almost wished that the Quill guy had stayed instead— almost. Tony knew selfishly who he really wanted to be here. (The point is not to think about it).

She grunts, “You’re wrong. The ship will work better this way, you’re being an idiot.” Her black eyes dig into him as she carelessly throws the wire aside as if she was flicking away a bug.

Amusement riles up in him even before he caught the sly, but shy, smirk in her lips and realizes that she’s joking. Or, at least, attempting to. Tony wishes she would do it in a way that doesn’t damage their only hope of getting home, but right now he’ll take what he can get.

He pushes himself back from the engine and his joints groan in protest, reminding him that he’s not the suave, young bachelor he had been before. “Yeah, well, it’s faster my way and last I checked, I was in charge.”

Her lips pull together in a pout that he’s quick to point out, “You look adorable like that,” and he takes a shaky step back before she can make do with that murderous expression of hers.

He hasn’t healed completely from the whole evil wrinkly Barney almost killing him (and succeeding in wiping half the population, _probably half of Tony’s family like Spidey— or Pepper, god no-_ ) and while he doesn’t stop that from him sweating in the heat from the smoking engine as he strains his muscles from working on it for the last fifteen hours, he’ll milk the injury for all it’s worth so Neb doesn’t attack.

At this point, he doesn’t think she will. It’s jarring to consider that they’ve probably become something akin to friends. Traumatized friends. He’ll have to start on the bracelets soon.

“I can—“ Tony never hears what Nebula can do, probably something like breaking his limb one by one, because a loud crash breaks through her sentence.

His guard raises as the nanobots respond to his will, forming themselves around his body and the helmet closes around his face while Nebula unclips her gun. It’s been a long journey in space and they hadn’t encountered anyone else; no ships, no other planets, nothing but asteroids and dust.

Could it be Thanos?

He moves toward the door, holding a hand out to Nebula to signal her to stop (she does, she actually _trusts_ him enough to follow his advice) and steps through. Tony powers his blasters and faces whatever made the sound, whatever creature was stupid enough to go into the ship of two grieving, angry people.

It takes a lot to shock him and this makes the cut. A small, skinny boy wearing a navy, school boy uniform lays crumpled on the floor with tools scattered around him from the cart he had no doubt knocked over.

Well, that explains the crash. Tony creeps forward and the closer look of the kid’s face sends a shock wave of sadness through him. Dark, tousled hair over a pale face and long eyelashes that curl at the ends, young and innocent and so like _Peter_ that Tony’s mouth goes dry.

“Do we not attack the invader?” Nebula asks, appearing behind Tony. She hadn’t made the impulse decision to relax like he had and only did he realize by looking at her that he’s out of his suit. He swallows down the grains of emotions and answers softly, “No.”

“Not yet.”

He moves to crouch down but a hand on his shoulder stops him, her eyes narrowing with intellect as she states, “Don’t be foolish, you’re too injured. Where do I put him?”

He offers her a grateful smile, for her help but also how she doesn’t ask any rightful questions, and shuffles back so she can move her arms under the child.

Tony leans on the wall and watches as Nebula scoops the kid up, his head hanging down so the curtains of brown bangs fall out of his face. Tony estimates that he’s thirteen, maybe fourteen, with his still round cheeks and youthful face. His heart yearns, just a little bit. “Take him to Quill’s room.”

He had been sleeping there, but he figures that it’s the safest option. The tiniest bed had a bomb under the blanket, the room Tony guesses belonged to the grey scared guy is filled with knives an array of sizes, and Nebula is staying in her sister’s room. He pretends not to notice when he would see her cradling the pillow in her hands, squeezing it until her knuckles turn white, cause she threw a knife at him the last time he tried to comfort her.

Nebs, right now, shifts so the kid’s weight in even and marches down the hallway towards the messy, red styled bedroom. Tony trails after her, vocalizing what they’re both thinking, “How’d he get here? Kids don’t just appear, this ain’t Hogwarts.”

She nudges the door open with her foot and carelessly dumps him on the squishy mattress made of a material Tony can’t name. The boy flops, his arm twisting under him, and starts to shiver in the warm air.

“Shapeshifter. We can interrogate him for information then push him through the airlock,” Nebula answers as she wipes her hands on her pants like she doesn’t see anything wrong with that.

“No, I don’t-. Why would a shapeshifter even come to us? We’re not near anything. Emptiness, all fucking around.” He takes a slow step forward. He wasn’t even aware there were shapeshifters in space and it’s hard to think of this small child as someone who’s going to hurt them— especially since he’s passed out harder than sleeping beauty.

Tony notices blood peeking from his nose, droplets slowly dripping out as his chest inhales then exhales. The kid’s paleness is more noticeable now, less of a natural skin tone and more of a sickness like a three day old fever.

He touches the back of his hand to the boy’s forehead, like Jarvis did to him after his father gave up trying to be the parent that took care of his child, and predictably, he’s burning up. There’s not a lot of medical supplies on the ship and they used a lot on him to fight back the infection the threatened to take his life more than the blood loss had.

Nebula grunts as he brainstorms ways to keep the boy alive. They’re slim on antibiotics, but he’s pretty sure if he scrounges around in Quill’s room he’ll find something that can work on humans, since Tony’s pretty sure the ginger was one? There wasn’t a lot of time to talk about ancestry, but he’ll trust the guy’s DNA considering he’s from Missouri (on Earth, of course).  

Tony checks the kid’s pulse, weak and feels that his skin is clammy with sweat on his neck and face. He can feel the tremors with his two fingers pressing under his jaw and reaches with his left for the closest thing to wipe the scarlet blood that runs down to his lips.

He can feel smurf’s judging glare, but given that he has the option, he’s going to ignore it. Tony knows the kid (if it’s even a human kid) is a threat, but… not a real big one.

He ends up grabbing a sock, hoping that it’s brown from the fabric and not use, and dabs it. A low growl, a warning, “Tony.”

Shit. Yeah. Dangerous potential shapeshifter, not- not his kid. Tony nods and pushes himself up, meeting Nebula’s scarily knowing eyes. “Don’t be foolish,” she repeats.

If only he felt humorous enough to laugh at that. He can only grin, forced and obvious, “No promises.”  



	2. You remind me of my father if he knew the word 'stop'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brief mention of puking/bile  
> don't have a beta, but we're rolling with it

‘Dolores.’

Five can taste the dream on his tongue, the long memories of her kind soul and forgiving nature, but the sweetness is quickly overpowered by the familiar twange of blood. It burns a hole in his mouth. He wakes up to the sound of rustling bodies and soft voices, forever intune to his surroundings after a lifetime of the only other sound being the whistling wind.

His time with the Commission furthered it, taught him that if he’s not ready when he wakes up then he’ll pay and with his father, if he wasn’t fully awake for the 3:00 am mission then his siblings pay. Five is conditioned to be ready to kill the first second his eyelids flutter.

He’s laying down on a soft material with something light covering him from the shoulders down. Not restrained, but weaponless. It’s either dark out or he’s in a windowless room. Five slowly takes a breath in to smell stale air and dirty laundry. Either he’s in Klaus’ room and they succeeded, or the Commission got a hold of him and is keeping him in a weirdly specific location (they never do anything without reason). 

His head hurts as if it was a pot of boiling water and someone was banging a wooden spoon to the side of it. 

He strains to hear the voices, being able to pinpoint two. One with heavy steps (Diego?) and another with light, barely there, as if they’re used to sneaking up on people. A male speaks, decidedly not Diego’s voice, “I wish we had an I.V. or something. Any medical supplies would be good, but I don’t see any space hospitals around.” 

He makes a quick-second decision. They might have drugged him and that’s why he’s not restrained, but the more likely scenario is that they’re aware of his power. Either way, he has to make quick work of them before they figure out that his little ‘nap’ has worn off. Five opens his eyes, takes in a small room with an open door that shows the back of the man, and jumps. 

He lands on the man’s shoulders and a deep, nauseating feeling spreads throughout him. Still, he brings the man to the floor with a twist of his body, landing with a grunt that he swallows. He lets his experience take control of him with the only thought of ‘survive’ in his mind. 

Five braces his hands on the sides of the man’s head, but sees the brown eyes flick away from him and he spatial jumps again— just before a buzzing shot hits where he just was. He’s never see that kind of technology before, but the Commission was also more advanced than everyone else. He appears behind the woman with a pair of pliers he stole from the man’s hand, his vision blurring immensely and he can’t tell which part of her he stabs when he jabs the metal out.

A force knocks Five in the jaw, strong and powerful, so he stumbles back, but pulls the pliers with him. Dizziness drags on his shoulders and he sways, forcing himself to jump away again to dodge a blue swirl of colors. He doesn’t know where he lands and he curses himself for the stupid mistakes he’s made as he falls to his knees. 

Bile pushes its way up his throat and he pukes in front of him. Then, as his vision fades to black and consciousness kisses his forehead, he hears a muffled voice arguing for his life. He’s out before he finds out if they won (which is as annoying as it is inconvenient).

The second time Five regains awareness, he’s restrained (idiotic) and sitting upright. With his breathing even, he focuses on the feeling of something rubbery in texture wrapped around his torso, legs, and arms. The same male’s voice rings in his eardrums and it takes all of his resilience to not wince at the pain that shoots through his head. 

“You’re not getting out of seeing a game. They’re essential to humans, it’s so ingrained into our species that our children come out of the womb holding a football.” 

His headache hasn’t gone away during the time he was down. He still tastes blood, but now with an aftertaste of puke and sandpaper. 

“What is a womb?”

He tries to pinpoint the twos’ location. The woman’s off to the side, her cold voice strident on the right side of his body, and the man is moving. His footsteps clap on solid ground (tennis shoes, lightweight) and Five estimates that he’s four- now three feet away. 

The male drawls, “We know you’re awake, kid. Just- We’re not gonna attack you.” A scoff from the right, the woman should be around ten feet away judging by sound. He’s not Vanya though. “Correction. _I_ won’t attack you. No promises for blueberry over there.” 

Five’s eyes open, the gig is up, and he presses his lips in a thin line. He glances down and sees the crumpled white dress shirt instead of the academy blazer or even the vest. His tie is gone too, which is annoying considering he had literally killed for that. 

He focuses on the man, around 6 feet in height with a weight around the 180s, skinny, clear muscle loss, and standing unsteadily on his feet. That’s why he was able to get the drop on him so easily, the man is obviously injured from something (raised part of stained tank-top lower side, holds potential). 

“We had to undress you cause you puked all over yourself.” The man crosses his arms over his chest and seems to favor his right side over his left. Makes sense for where the injury is placed. “Listen,” he huffs, exhales as if Five was a troubling teenager (he knows he looks like one, but he has done nothing to warrant that condescending shit, he’s _dangerous_ ), “I’m Tony. Iron Man. You’re trespassing on our ship.” 

His gaze has already moved over to the woman. Same height as Tony. Weirdly shaped, her muscles are all contorted weirdly, but there’s an obvious size to them. Her face is marked with blues and silver metal with colorless iris. Five supposes the Commission would’ve picked up using androids at some point, but he thought they would have been smart enough to have the androids be able to blend in. 

She’s holding a heavyweight gun to her waist, pointed at him though it’s a gun type that he’s never seen before. It’s bulky with four square barrels, smoked grey and as awkwardly as she holds it, the sharpness of her expression shows how serious she is about using it. 

The room has no windows with shelves lining the walls. Storage room, probably underground, and so the only exit is the open door ten feet away in front of him. No guards, or persons, blocking it. Relatively easy to escape.

“You must be new,” Five reasons as he looks back to Tony, keeping steady eye-contact with him. He can make idle talk, sure, because he has to regain his strength. “They’re gonna fuck you over in the end.” 

Weariness squeezes him and he has to force his eyes open through the pounding inside his skull. He tastes more sandpaper and unintentionally swallows, dryness scratching down his throat.

“Who do you work for?” The woman snaps, her finger itching closer to the trigger. Short fuse, he can use that to his advantage. Her lips pull up in a prominent sneer, “For my father? If you were sent to kill us, I can assure you that you will _fail_ and _suffer_ for it. ”

“No one’s attacking anyone.” Tony almost takes a step forward, but seems to think twice and stays where he is. He quirks a single eyebrow up, and asks, his tone suspicious, “Unless you do work for Thanos…?”

Thanos? Five narrows his eyes as he tries to figure out what’s happening. How do they not know who he worked for? How he’s a free range traitor now? The Commission doesn’t give enough paperwork to their employees as they should, but basic shit like ‘worked for the Commission’ is especially known since he’s _a legend._

“What the hell are you talking about?” He doesn’t know a Thanos, they’re not any of his victims or coworkers. Ugh, his stomach feels like a dozen tiny needles plunging in and out of his skin and it’s making it hard to focus. Ignore the suffering and Survive. What do they want from him? He struggles to think of a reason why the Commission would want him alive. It’s not like they hadn’t been quiet about their annoyance. 

Tony frowns and glances helplessly to the android before sighing, murmuring under his breath that he’s ‘not going to go through this again’, whatever that means. “Alright, lets get basics out of the way,” he gestures to the woman, “She’s Nebula, or Billy Cranston, whatever fits your boat.”

There’s a silence that tightens around them after the joke fell flat, neither Nebula or Five showing a response to the reference that flies over their heads (though her face tightens as if she tasted a lemon for the first time). The awkwardness is a coiled string wrapping around a finger and it’s only when Five speaks does it break. “Five.”

“Like the number?”

“What else would it be like?”

Nebula jabs the gun forward, like she’s going to pull the trigger, so Five immediately spacial jumps away as a trigger response. He barely gets a foot away and the ground tips underneath him. Tony’s hands settle on back of his shoulders and he jerks forward, stumbling into the chair.

“Calm down. Let’s get the facts out of the way. Why are you here?” Tony hovers around Five as he speaks in a dulcet tone (like Five is a child _)_ and when he whirls around to face the man, he sees concerned brown eyes and an open face. It disgusts him, he can kill this man without an ounce of failure if his body wasn’t betraying him. 

He snarls, “I went through time to avoid death from the moon being destroyed. Are you  _not_ from the Commission?” At the frustrated look and repeated tone from Nebula, Five barrels on, “Great. I don’t know what your issue is nor do I care. I’m leaving.”

With his guard up, Five moves to walk past them, as it’s obvious his jumps are failing him, and he’s expecting a fight. None come. In fact, the two don’t make a move until he’s halfway across the room. He doesn’t turn his back on them and sees Tony exchange a silent exchange of confusion with Nebula before the man clears his throat. 

“Five, buddy, you’re in space.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said two weeks, but here I am? I think it's easier of me to just write, instead of trying to make it perfect or extremely long.  
> Thx for all of your comments, I didn't think this was going to be picked up at all. <3


	3. You remind me of my kid if he forgot how to smile.

Five didn’t take the news well. Tony waits as he tears through the spaceship, mumbling to himself about ‘useless equations’ and cursing in various degrees. He has half a mind to say language like Rogers and doesn’t that give him a bitter taste in his mouth, so he lets it go.

Nebula adamantly refuses to let go of the gun, which came from the room with the littlest bed, but they’ve already had the discussion of not shooting the kid until he’s absolutely, _clearly_ trying to kill them.

She told him that he’s letting his bias show, his weakness for human children, and he’s not denying it. Still, he can relate to the panic and the fighting Five had showed when he woke up. He was in a new place, disorientated and weak, coming from a moon being destroyed. It’d make anyone on edge.

Tony walks up behind Five and notices how the preteen’s shoulders hunch inwards. He’s standing in front of a wide window, showing the dark abyss of space, and Tony joins with a warning of his entrance, “Not going to attack you. Just want to talk.”

Five’s jaw clenches and he looks from the sea of black to him. Tony’s got a couple questions, ranging the topic of child soldier (because this small boy somehow manages to fight like Romanov) to the moon being destroyed. He shifts and turns 180°, resting his back on the reinforced glass plane.

He looks over and wonders if he can bribe the preteen into going back to sleep, but knowing how he acted when he woke up, there’s not a chance Five’s going to accept falling asleep with strangers. Good for him, really, but Tony can tell that he’s still unsteady in his feet.

At the silence that answers him, he asks, “So, time-traveler. You’re from earth, right? I think I would hear about a moon being destroyed.”

Five scowls. There’s deep, heavy bags under his eyes, like two twin bruises on his face. It reminds Tony of himself. “Yes,” The preteen replies, his tone irked and obviously annoyed, “I’m from Earth.”

He turns back to the window and stares sollumly in thought. Any of the stars that sprinkle throughout could be the one that belong to them. Home seems so far away now, Pepper left alone with no goodbye, and Tony frowns. He gently voices, “What year is it?”

“2019. April 1st.”

Five’s from the future and Tony really wishes that he had come a little sooner so they knew how to prevent this. It’s a little baffling that he doesn’t show recognition who he is, but it could always be his ego talking.

Tony can’t help himself to ask, “Do we reverse it? The snap?”

“What ‘snap’?”

“Half of the world turning to dust.”

Five blinks slowly and scrunches his forehead together. “That never happened,” he states, then narrows his eyes at Tony, “When did that happen?”

“Sixteen days ago. April 27, 2018,” Tony answers, forcing to look away from the kid because all he can see is Peter crumbling to dust in his arms, his crying voice pleading not to leave, and Five might just be the physical representation of all his failure. He stares at the metal wall with a paper note taped to it that read,

_‘DON’T FUCKING TOUCH MY STUFF -Rocket_

_its my stuff bt ok -Star lord_

_Ii an grout -Grout_

_*I *am *Groot, you’re getting there, buddy. Also, fuck you Quill. -Rocket’_

A small screenshot to the life that once lived through these halls. Shown through the discarded boots under Quill’s bed, a box of ‘cosmic holes’ cereal with a name in blocky sharpie on it, and other domestic things that cause Tony’s heart to ache every time he passes them. He found a crumpled piece of paper under Quill’s pillow the third day, a list for all the gifts that he’s going to get his crewmates, and it’s a burning reminder how much they were _people._ More than 4 billion people with lives and families just wiped away.

He continues, “You must- it happened everywhere in the universe.”

“I’ve been through almost every instance of time, past and present and future, and no one has turned into ‘dust’, so tell me, what the hell are you talking about?” Five snaps. Tony stiffens in surprise at the sudden anger, then at the annoyed confusion Five is radiating. His eyebrows push together at his own confusion, then understanding.

He breathed a sigh out. It would explain Five’s blankless, nonexistent recollection of the worst moment in Earth history. “Who’s your president?”

It takes twenty seconds for Five to answer and Tony becomes concerned after the first three, but reassures himself that it’s probably taking awhile because the kid’s a supposed time traveler. Does he ever settle down? The question list Tony has been subtly adding to keeps growing longer.

“Hillary Clinton.”

He chuckles and at Five’s sullen silence, he explains nonchalantly, “You’re not just in space. You’re in a whole ass other dimension. America’s got Trump for president right now.”

The kid disappears in a pop of blue and leaves no evidence he was there at all. There’s questions about that too.

Tony leaves the kid alone for an hour, respecting his space, and collapses next to Nebula to play another game of finger football. She’s gotten better and he vocalizes as much, only to be reminded that soon she will win so much that he’ll only taste the reminder of losing (and ain’t that true). When it’s time to eat, he gathers a portion of their dwindling supplies and strolls to Quill’s room.

He hears rustling inside, so he figures he was right. It’s not like there’s a lot of places for the kid to go. Tony knocks on the door with his knuckles, transferring the meal to his arm to do so, and waits two seconds before knocking again.

“Go away!” is just a shorter way of saying ‘come on in,’ so Tony nudges the door open. The room’s most definitely gotten more of a wreck since he was last in here with drawers open, mattress pushed up to the wall, and math equations taking up a section of the room. Five stands in the center of it all, shaking out a bag onto the floor and as its contents skid out, he definitely looks like a crazed maniac.

He grunts and flings the cloth bag off to the side then stalks back over to the drawers. Tony watches as the kid tears through the drawers, grumbling to himself as he searches for something, and part of him feels the need to stop him from rooting through dead-guy Quill's things.

Tony reaches out and the boy snaps away from him quickly, disappearing in a flash of blue and reappearing in the doorway with a murderous expression. "Don't touch me," the child snarls with a vicious tone.

"What are you looking for, kid?" He asks instead of touching that land-mine he accidentally stepped in, but instead of calming him down, it only appears to ruffle the boy's feathers even more. He sees his fists bunch up and an even colder glare greets him.

"I'm fifty-eight goddamn years old and I'm looking for a pen because I can't stay here. I'm not a kid, I'm not your child, and if you're not going to help me then get the fuck out."

Tony blinks. He would normally say it takes a lot to shock him. Wizards, evil space Barney, and a couple billion of dust people he can deal with. But an angry preteen claiming to be older than him from an alternate dimension? He’s pretty sure he owes Nebula twenty bucks (or the alien equivalent) if Five’s an actual shapeshifter.

“Yeah, sure, buddy, but why do you look thirteen?”

Five scowls, practically snarling, as he stands there, a miniature body of boiling rage, “I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time, yet made an error somewhere in my calculations. Do you _know_ where a _pen_ is?!”

Tony does have a stray pen in one of his pockets. He hands it over and Five snatches it out of his hand quickly, takes the time to inspect it over, before teleporting to the side of the room where the equations lapped over the room’s wall. It’s complicated math, almost obnoxiously so, that Tony has to double-take and spend a second sorting through it. “You miscalculated,” he speaks, wobbling over to the wall and tapping his fingers on the wrong answer. He leaves the meals by the door.

Five, still wearing a scowl like he’s a pissy grumpy cat, sulks to him and goes through it. “Alright,” the kid (58 year old apparently) responds, and rises on his toes to fit in another long problem. He rips off a poster to make room, an feminine alien with long legs and a particularly sized bosom, and Tony steps his foot on it, kicking it under an intact, nearby drawer.

He offers to help and doesn’t expect a yes in return, but it’s given.

Nebula pops in thirty minutes later with rations and she throws his pouch with a spoon on him then curls her lips at Five and his frantic scribbling. Tony doesn’t get what he’s trying to calculate here, there’s about ten different formulas. “Nubs,” he sighs.

Her face puckers and she flings the packet at Five, hitting him in the back of the head. His shoulders tighten and the portal-hopper hisses, “Go away if you’re not here to help. I don’t have time for quarrels.”

The silver of the pact glints in the low fourcesent lighting. “It’s food,” Tony explains, picking it up with rough fingertips and holding it out to Five. Five takes a second before taking it, ripping it open with his teeth and slurping down the space chili before the older man can offer him a spoon.

For the best, Tony gives him his share as well. “We should talk. No offense, but we still know don’t your story. Or fuc- fudging understand it at the very least. How the hell are you so good with fighting? What are you trying to solve?”

“Fine. I’ll share.” Five wipes his mouth on his sleeve and carelessly throws the drained pouch to the side of him. “On the 12th hour of the first day of October 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth. It was unusual only in the fact that none of these women had been pregnant when the day first began.”

“Ey,” Tony cuts in, earning him another sharp glare that doesn’t look right on such a youthful face, “I didn’t sign up for any fairy tales. Give it to me straight.”

“I am,” Five grumbles. Nebula had sat down and leans forward, his legs crossed with her elbows resting on the insides of her knees. She gives Tony a glare as well, then nods to Five, “Carry on.”

“Great. I was one of them..”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do you guys want me to reply to comments? I read and cherish all of them, but I’m unsure if you want a response or not. 
> 
> Also, this chapter was harddd and I’m not too happy with how it came out. I hope y’all liked it anyways. ^^


	4. You could be my father if you didn't care.

As Five told his story, he could see that the younger man wasn’t believing it— accepting his truth as a reality. Alternative dimensions? Acceptable. But apparently forty-three women giving birth spontaneously is too much of a stretch for little Tony’s mind. Thirty minutes later and he’s still hung up about it.

“So, I went back in time. Seventeen years in the future with the wreckage of my world, I found the _bodies_ of my siblings, Luther holding the _only_ key I had to what-“

Tony interrupts, leaned back on the wall with his long legs sprawled out in front of him. His back brushing on, possibly smearing, the inked equations. “Luther is the strong man, correct? Number Two? Which woman was his mama?”

“Number One,” Nebula corrects, her position not moved or shifted once in the time since she’s sat down, and overwhelmingly gives Five the vibe that he should have his guard raised, she’s dangerous. Her body language shows she’s not relaxed either and she’s constantly brushing her hand over where he knows she keeps a gun. She doesn’t trust him. She continues, “And it clearly doesn’t matter who he was in the bladder of, the mama was just a vessel for him.”

Tony quirks his eyebrows and draws his fingers over his chin, scruff flattening under the rough appendages. “Yeah, that’s not how we see mothers on Earth. And it’s womb, blue bell, or else men could have children.”

Five tries to remember the studies Pogo gave his siblings and him. Biology, or was it health? Either way it was a stupid subject, since Diego kept getting light-headed and everyone avoided Vanya _and_ Allison after they were forced to watch a woman give birth. It’s undoubtedly something Five never wants to experience and Dolores agreed with him, which he’s thankful for. Just learning the whole process of getting to that point of impregnated made him as nauseous as Diego is when getting stitches.

“Men can have offspring,” she shoots back, annoyance creeping into her tone, “I came from one before my father rescued- _stole_ me.”

Stole? Five sighs heavily and rubs his temples with his thumbs. They truly, truly don’t have time for this. He shouldn’t even bother with the rest of his backstory because he’s not going to be around long enough for it to matter. For him to become ‘friends’ with these space travelers.

“Well, I mean Earth men. Humans.” Tony changes his statement, but it just makes Five frown. Diego’s a man, but it’s possible for him to have children (though he’s pretty sure his brother wouldn’t want to go through it). He narrows his eyes.

“Transgender men,” he bites, watching the younger man’s expression shift wildly between guilt and embarrassment. He flounders, brown eyes shooting around the room, and shakes his head like a regretful kid when asked if they broke the lamp.

Tony clears his throat. “I mean cisgender men. Kid, I-. I’m an ally, I didn’t mean anything wrong by it. My own kid, he’s trans.” Five sees the indent where he’s chewing on his cheek before lowly chuckling. “Man, I guess I fucked up all over that one.”

“Don’t call me kid.”

“Right, you’re supposedly 58 years old.”

Five might just kill this man from pure annoyance before he can get his equations done. He bites his tongue and swallows the insults with struggling persistence that would make Dolores proud. (Oh, how he misses her kind, gentle smile and chiding words.) “Anyways, if you don’t want to continue, I have equations to solve.”

He drops his hands to his lap while the two nod, gesturing for him to go on, so he tells the rest of his story with relative ease. Though he lies by omission multiple times. He doesn’t mention the Commission or what they did to his family (Klaus’ jumpiness when mom boiled water, like he was expecting that she would pour it on him, or Diego’s grief-stricken face with sad, mourning eyes), much less his own sister causing the apocalypse.

What the two know are what they deserve to know, because they’re still strangers and automatically are dangerous. His father, the Handler, they broke him down to a duct-taped shell. He can’t give up anything too important.

“I understand,” Nebula utters to the chilling silence that greets them when Five’s finished. His eyes shoot to hers and meets them. She shifts and he tenses up, (should’ve never let his guard down, what was he thinking). “My father trained me to be a soldier too. I would’ve done anything to make him happy.”

She pauses, but doesn’t look away as a second passes. Tony is jarringly quiet. The android voices, “I was put in a competition like One and Two with my sister. Every time I failed to beat her, I would have a piece of me replaced with metal, so I could ‘catch up’, but I _never_ beat her.”

It seems she’s a cyborg instead. Oh well, Five has seen weirder things that are of actual importance.

“He tortured me, used the stone to take me apart piece by piece so he could pry information out of Gamora and then left me for dead. I escaped, but he killed her.”

Five nods, absentmindedly writing down numbers and signs, interest lost in the conversation so he murmurs as if he was talking to Dolores, “My father killed my brother.”

Tony muttered under his breath, yet still audible to Nebula’s advance senses and Five’s trained ear, voice spiteful and hard, “What the hell is it with shitty fathers? We should all get into a support group or something, hah, bet Rogers would like that.”

Shitty fathers seem to span dimensions. That’s good to know. Five scribbles down different equations and properties onto the chill metal of the ground, scraping the pen Tony had gave him for the sharpie he found rolling harmless on the ground like he hadn’t needed it before. Their voices fade to background noise as his body creaks and moans for sleep. He’s good at ignoring it though.

He hears his name a couple of times as the minutes pass and gives grunts in response as the numbers grow bigger. At one point, their bodies shift and he flips the marker so he’s holding it as a weapon, if he moves fast enough there would be enough force for him to take out Tony’s eyeball then Nebula’s in quick succession. It doesn’t come to that, as they leave without a fight, and Five’s left alone. Good.

The next weeks passes the same way. Five goes over equations, (berading himself for the half-second stupid equations he had done in the moment, loathing himself for screwing up bad enough that he ended up in a whole other dimension without his siblings‒ missing them, just a little bit), and Tony seems to be constant companion that’s very much not needed. He’ll admit he didn’t expect some run of the mill man to be able to grasp complex agrothems, but the ‘Iron Man’ has some unexpected clever thinking.

The most aggravating and yet soothing thing from Tony is that he talks. A lot. Maybe not as much as Klaus, who hisses at the air and has one-sided conversations with murdered victims, but enough that the sound of his voice is a constant noise drifting in and out of his ears. Five listens about how the man’s glad Five’s whole time travel is based on logic, that Beatles weren’t as good as everyone claims them to be, and so on, so forth. It’s annoying, sure, but Five can admit that he doesn’t hate the sound as much as he tells Tony he does.

Secretly, Five thinks there’s more to why the younger man clings to him. They told him about the ‘snap’ and how this purple, deadly alien killed half the universe’s population (another apocalypse, but this one Five isn’t required to stop).

He thinks Tony lost someone. Grief.. It can be a hard thing. If Five didn’t have Dolores during those years, after burying his siblings with dirt-caked hands and a sunburnt, starving body, then he’s sure he would’ve gone insane.

It’s nearing day fifteen he’s been on the ship. Supplies have dwindled since he appeared, but he’s used to rationing, though his thirteen year old body isn’t and things are being pushed to him more often than not. They’re all weak, exhaustion wrapping them up tight in blankets that suffocate them, Five’s hand shaking as he writes more and more on the cluttered walls of a room. Nebula’s not as affected, but she claims to have survived a direct explosion so this is nothing to her enhanced. Tony’s worse off.

The outline of Tony’s bones are obvious when he leans forward, the curve of his spine sharp enough to cut Five’s hand, and his cheeks have mirrored sunken holes of hunger. Dry lips match the ones on him as their water supply slowly retreats to droplets found on stray items. When Five wraps his nimble fingers around his wrist, his fingers overlap like a long piece of string winded around a twig.

Nebula announces suddenly, picking up the strange barreled gun, her body language as tense as she was when he first came, “Something’s coming.” Her voice cuts through the air, sharp and serious, so Five’s on his feet before she ends the sentence.

They still mutually don’t trust each other, but they’re on the same side.

The ground moves under him as the familiar feeling of nausea creeps upon him. He forces it down. Nebula eyes him before throwing him a gun, small and orange with a similar design that he’s used to seeing on earth. He nods, pocketing it, and spacial jumps to the front of the ship. He startles Tony, who had been sitting in one of the pilots’ seats.  
  
Five leans forward, his hand bracing himself on the armchair as his eyes search through the ocean of black, speckled sea and asks, “How many?”

“Just one. Big, bright yellow thing. Showed up on the ships monitors two minutes ago, barely in range, but now it’s already moved five miles. Shi- thing moves _fast_ .” Tony shows the information, telling Five that the blinking red dot is the incoming thing, and Five calculates how much time they have before it reaches them.  


“Fuck.” He voices and checks the gun to make sure it has bullets. Can the ship attack? Even if it could, it certainly couldn’t now since they’ve been saving power. It’s so useless and stupid to be attacked when all of them are weak (Nebula included, if she’s a superpowered, unkillable cyborg then she’s not at her prime).

“Did you just _curse?_ ”

Nebula strolls in, saving Five from looking at Tony’s alarmed face, and attaches something over her ear. Instantly, a force field of transparent blue swallows her face, changing to a metal gas mask with shining red eyes. “I’ll take care of this by myself, then both of you are clearly _incapable_.”

Tony looks between Five and Nebula as if he’s watching a tennis match, holding up his hands, his palms outstretched to them. “Hold on, put the phone down, what the hell are you wearing and did you seriously curse or am I imagining the _f-word_ coming out of your thirteen year old mouth? Fifteen days and this is the first curse I’ve heard, should I ground you? Is there grounding in space?”

Five ignores the foolish rambling and turns his anger on her. Murderous sarcasm hangs onto his tongue, “I am not incapable. If anything, that’s you. All brawn and not a speck of a brain cell in that tin can you call a body. You haven’t helped in getting us home, you’ve done nothing.”

She turns the weapon on him, her finger inching towards the trigger, and shouts, “I’m not the one wearing shorts for prepubescent human male offspring that drink tea!”

He snarls at her. She hisses back.

“Oh crap, the thing must’ve gone into hyper drive cause it’s right on top of us. Guys, as much as measuring contest would be a great use of our time (I would obviously win, but that’s not the point), we’ve got company.” Tony points to the red dot that’s only ten feet away now. In view. In firing distance.

It comes around and stops in front of their ship. A woman with a glowing body and mohawk helmet. Five aims the gun towards her face, but doesn’t shoot as it would kill them all if it broke through the glass. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m giving you one chance to get out of here before I kill you.”

Strangely, the woman seems to start laughing.

“Fuck,” he says again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've shifted it so they were in space for longer (approx. 8 days longer). It doesn't really matter in the long run, but thought you should be aware in case you were confused.
> 
> Also I’ve only seen Marvel movies once, I’m too impatient to sit through a movie I’ve already seen, so if anything’s wrong it’s because I’m not remembering it right.


	5. You could be my kid if he wore blood like face paint.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter.. Sorry, my bad.

The woman (“Carol,” She cheerfully says with an amused smile and teasing presence, apparently being so sickeningly patronizing that Five flips her off the moment her back is turned. “She’s motherly,” the kid had said with disgust) starts to push them toward Earth. Tony doesn’t quite feel it, but it’s obvious how fast they’re going when looking to the blur of muted colors out the windows.

He’s an atheist, but he’s thanking every deity known to man for Carol. Tony remembers how hours ago, he believed it to be the end. He had a nightmare that clung to him for days afterwards; Five with painted blue lips and shaking hands, grasping his shoulders and begging for air, choking on nothing as the oxygen runs out. Tony might’ve cried when he woke up and he doesn’t know the old-kid that well anyways.

After that, he had sat up late with his malfunctioning helmet, staring deep into the screen as he films a video to Pepper. He confesses things Nebula and him don’t tell Five, who thinks that their food and water is just now drawing to a close and doesn’t seem to consider how weak their oxygen is.

_ (“This thing on?” He taps on the exterior, making a twing, and relaxes his shoulders to the sight of the blinking red dot— almost hidden to the naked eye. It would’ve been disgrunting for the others to know he could be recording at any time. Sure, he didn’t think he would use it for this purpose. _

_ He leans back on the metal that digs uncomfortably into his back. “Hey, Miss Potts,” he whispers, trying to make his voice light and amusing, even as he tries to keep quiet to not wake the unconscious kid in the nearby room. _

_ “If you find this recording, don’t freak out about this. Part of the journey is the end… though Five keeps telling me, when he finally speaks that is, that the end is just something made up. ‘Nothing is ever truly the end.”’ He chuckles, soaked with sarcasm and melancholy.  _

_ He looks off to the door separating them, recalling how Five had passed out due to his own exhaustion, a sprawl of uncoordinated preteen limbs and slight drool. _

_ “You would like him, I think. He’s got balls, a real fighter. He’s.. not like Peter, he’s a grenade wrapped in poison and anarchy. A little gremlin.”) _

Looking at Five now, Tony resists the urge to draw him into a hug and press his chin on top of his head, holding him with the overwhelming relief the shakes his core. ‘Not a kid,’ he reminds himself, just a 58 year-old superhero who has striking similarities to his dead kid. It’s not fair to Peter to replace him. It’s not fair to Five to compare him to someone he doesn’t know— wasn’t in the dimension to know.

Five sits in another pilot seat, hunched over his knees, with his eyes narrowed in suspicion while he idly passes the loaded pistol between each hand. “I don’t trust her,” He grits out. 

Nebula pauses in the middle of sharpening a long, curved knife. It really shows how bad the trust issues are in them, Tony can at least humor the idea that Carol isn’t going to immediately throw them in a nearby star. “I agree,” she mutters, forcing the words out as if she’s being held at gunpoint, “We shouldn’t let our guard down. Attack at first chance.”

He rolls his eyes up to the ceiling. Of course, the first thing the two agree on is how dangerous a flaming, powerful woman is. Clearing his throat, he gains the their attention, “We should give her a shot. I mean,” a slight chuckle, anxious and strained, “She’s our only hope, our genie is a burning bottle.”

God, they were really going to die. Still are, if she doesn’t get them back in time. Tony hasn’t ate anything in the past two days and his stomach claws at his sides to remind him, grumbling underneath the purpose. Nebula’s had none more than that, but Tony made sure the kid had the last of their measly supplies.

Five’s still overwhelmingly skinny. He’s a growing boy, should probably be eating three times more than he has been and is obviously only barely over five foot. Tony doesn’t think the kid weighs more than 100 pounds and his last meal was yesterday, dug through quickly, some hard pellets dusted with cheese powder. 

Today, they’re all running on empty.

“I don’t think so, and Tony?” The smile Five gives him is all lips, tightly pressed in a thin line, dangerous and snarky, overconfident and deadly. “I have cursed before. Quill’s space. You were grating on my nerves and I told you to get the fuck out.”

He might’ve actually laughed to that. As weak as they are, evident in how the humans can barely stand for more than a second, there’s still the blooming strength that pursues through in waves of humor and hope. It’ll be their last day in space.

As the spaceship touches down, he reaches over and squeezes Nebula’s hand. He might delirious with thirst and grief, but his words are coherent when he presses them to her, “I won’t let them harm you.” It’s very possible.

She’s an alien carrying two daggers on her, would’ve had a gun if Five ever gave it back, and his team (ex-team, only the broken and shattered pieces remain) might not welcome a mechanical woman who has direct ties with Thanos. He won’t let them judge her with harsh eyes and avoidance, they’ll just have to accept her. If they’re alive that is.

The door opens to the night of Earth, groaning as gears shift together, and a walkway is lowered. Tony tightens his grip on Nebula, their arms locked together, her holding him up as his legs fumble to hold him up. The oxygen that hits them as they walk down feels like a breath of relief, and he sucks in as much as he can.

Five drifts behind them, using a longsword as a walking stick because he adamantly denied using Nebs as a clutch. He peers at the group that’s gathered below them; a group that Tony realizes with a jolt is his family. Steve, Natasha,  _ Pepper. _

Steve reaches them first and grasps his shoulders, Nebula automatically tightens her grip, but all he says is, “He won.”

Tony smiles at him, weak and wavering, “I know. I lost the kid, Cap. But I- I fucking gained a new one.”

Steve looks past him to the little space jumper and he’s thankful for that because of the tears that he blinks out of his eyes. Five scowls back, but his expression of displeasure quickly shifts to surprise, shock, and actual to god, happiness. 

Quickly, Tony sees why. A man and a woman surge through the crowd, pushing past Pepper and Thor, and surround Five. They look nothing like him, with darker skin, fierce expressions, and obvious different ethnicities, but he can tell right off the bat that they’re Five’s family. Weren’t there more of them? A whole academy?

They grab his shoulders and tug the kid into a hug. Tony feels discomfort at watching the affair, peeking into a life that isn’t his, and only gets more guilty when after an initial seize up, Five relaxes into his family’s arms.

Tony gets distracted by Pepper barreling into his arms and he’s letting go of Nebula, clutching his fiancé as tightly as he dares. She sobs into his shoulder and he combs his shaky hand through her strawberry blonde locks. 

“I’m alive,” he rushes the words into the side of her head, smelling cherries and cinnamon from the shampoo that’s at the compound. She shudders in a shaky breath and weakly hits his chest with loose fists, “Don’t ever do that again. Never again.”

“It’s not on the schedule, sweetheart. I could maybe squeeze it in between eating my weight in donuts and showering for several hours, but it’ll be a tight fit.”

She meekly laughs and pulls away, giving him clear view of her exhausted, haunted eyes and tear stained cheeks. Even wrecked and beaten, she’s as beautiful as she was when he first met her.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, before she pulls him into a kiss that says, ‘Don’t be sorry, it’s not your fault. I forgive you.’

Steve stands like a statue beside them, awkwardly watching the reunions of someone who never got his own, clearing his throat then stating, “Let’s debrief.”


	6. You might be my father if all you spoke were lies.

****

Five could handle small bursts of touch, he thinks. Wrapped in his siblings’ arms like a scarf he swaddles over his face to block out the ash, he lets himself be held by their strong arms and shaking bodies, quivering with consolation. 

He thought he lost them. He was so sure of it, when Tony had been looking everywhere but him, his voice sticky with dispirited humor,  _ “You’re not just in space. You’re in a whole ass other dimension.” _

He thought he left them behind and didn’t appear as an acorn, but rather a whole ass pineapple. Now, as he breathes in Allison’s sugary perfume, he could almost cry. Of course, Five refrains himself from doing such childish things. 

They still have to get back home, they can’t stay here in a dimension where half the universe has turned to dust.

Five pushes himself out of the hold, catching his brother’s keen eyes, and wipes his hands on his undershirt that he’s been wearing for the past fifteen days. 

He lived in the apocalypse, so cleanliness doesn’t have much meaning to him anymore. 

The group starts to move toward toward the large professional building and Five shuffles his feet, catching himself on Diego’s stupid turtleneck shirt. A hand presses on the smaller part of his back and he only tolerates it because he knows it’s Allison. 

“Do you need help?” His younger brother voices, his voice gravelly and snotty as if he’d been crying. His eyes were red and puffy as well, ruddy brown watery and soft. It’s so unlike the hard shine, guarded look Diego wore like a second skin when he was younger.

Five squishes down the self-righteous, holier-than-thou feeling that rises up in him and carefully nods in response. Diego gently covers his shoulders with his arm and leads him, not minding his tripping feet dragging on the grass.

Allison takes the sword from him with careful hands and tilts her chin at Tony’s back as if she was judging him for giving the dangerous weapon to Five.  Black dots swirl in his vision and he reaches behind him with one arm, reassuring himself with the touch of the small gun.

They don’t immediately gather together and instead, Diego leads him to an infirmary. “Get some rest,” Diego gruffs, and Five stares at his brother’s face, chin rough with stubble, scar standing out on the side of his head.

As he sits down one the beds, paper crinkling under him, he voices his confusion, “I saw you go back to your child’s form.” 

There’s a lot he doesn’t understand anymore.

Something suddenly touches his arm and he flinches, his arm knocking into Diego’s chest and he rips the gun out. 

His chest rattles with his rapid breath and his hand goes limp when he sees the danger is just a mousy man with breakable glasses. (5’9”, small build, lacking armor, accessible pen in front pocket.)

“I will kill you if you try anything,” he promises and the man nods with a strained smile.

“Just here to check your vitals. You seem unsteady on your feet, so, uh.” The man holds out a needle and slowly slides it into Five’s wrist, (Diego mutters ‘Oh, god’ and turns away). 

Tony ambles into the room, waving off a blond superman who looked like what Five originally imagined Luther to grow into, and smiles at them. “Hey, Bruce.”

“Hey, Tony.” Bruce’s smile is less forced when he shines it at the genius. Tony’s still helped by Nebula, but with another woman on his other side, keeping a steady hand on him even with heels.

(She’s around 5’10 in heels, slim build, lacking noticeable muscle with nails that seem bitten, not chipped.) She laughs weakly at something Tony said and helps him onto the other bed, Bruce taking another I.V. needle to put into his arm.

“Bruce, this is Five.” 

Bruce gives him another smile and a nod as he takes out a stethoscope. Diego jerks forward and juts his hand out to Tony, giving him a shielded expression that comforts Five as much as it chills the superhero. 

“Diego, and that’s Allison. We’re Five’s siblings.”

Casually, Diego nods over to Allison, who sits behind Five on the bed. The white cloth is still taped to her throat, so he assumes she’s still mute, and under the eyes of everyone else in the room, he doesn’t risk it. 

But he would like to offer his hand to her for assurement (though he’s not sure he would’ve even done it if they were alone).

Tony takes the hand with a delighted expression, “Tony Stark. Are there really no Stark Industries in your dimension? And, by the way, your brother’s real fun. Very ‘stabby.’”

Five’s proud of how tight Diego squeezes the billionaire’s hand; never trust strangers. Then, he feels something brush against his fingertips and turns his head back to Allison, fingers outreaching to his on the infirmary bed. 

In his personal silence, he folds his hand over hers and keeps it there.

They spend the night, everyone it seems like, in the infirmary. Pepper, as Tony introduced her as, sleeps smushed on cot with the younger man, body curled against his as their chests rise and fall at the same time. 

His arm drapes over her side, loose, but his fingers curl at the ends, clutching her shirt. It shows his desperation, Five thinks. Grief can be a funny thing.

Allison leans back against the wall and closes her eyes, still leaving him with enough space to curl up on his side without touching her. His hand has fallen asleep, but he doesn’t risk moving it, though he does shift to pull off her high heels. Honestly, he’s not sure why anyone would wear those death traps. 

At some point, he acknowledges that thinking endlessly over all that he’s done wrong and the horrific ways he could fix it gets tiring. 

Five was genuinely going to leave without his siblings.  _ Abandon _ them like he feels deep down everyone thinks he did. 

He didn’t know they traveled with him, but why didn’t he try to think about just a second longer? He’s so selfish.

He lays down on his side, brings his knees to his chest, and closes his eyes.

Diego does pull up a chair, but spends the first two hours pacing beside Five’s bed. He wears the nervous, restless energy like a cloak, and his mask is made out of anger and fear. 

Occasionally, he’ll brush his hand over Five’s head, drag his fingers through his tangled, grimy hair, as if he’s reminding himself that he’s really there.

Nebula drags another chair, pushes it in between the two cots, and positions herself on it. Five’s not sure if she slept, but later reports from Diego (before he fell asleep, cheek pressing into his arm so to leave an imprint, drool dripping onto the sheets he’s hunched over) claim that she didn’t. 

He dreams of crumbling libraries with scratched walls and ablazed cars picked clean of supplies.

Walking down a broken road with concrete cracked and splitting open, pushing up, his shoelaces drag. 

His socks fall from his shins and scrunch up on his ankles, but the frayed fabric is glued to his skin because of the blood. His right arm dangles uselessly to his side.

His arm is soaked with red, colored like a five year old’s finger painting, droplets gather at his fingertips before dropping off to the scorching ground. Despite the pain pushing through him and the messy, deep wound in his wrist, he can still see the tracker continuously blinking in it.

He digs his fingers into his flesh, yet it just sinks deeper. Five drops his hand and continues further until he stumbles in front of the academy, the rubble that it is.

Standing in the middle of it is Vanya.

Her eyes are ringed with heavy black, layered over bruises and pain, and sear white with the anguish she built up over the years. The years he was gone.

He tries to speak, but the wind carries his voice along with the dust and ash of the burned victims. Her eyes meet his and she smiles.

_ ‘You will never escape,’  _ she shouts and her voice is an alarming symphony that crackles in his ears.

Five wakes up with a choked gasp and swallow that covers the sob boiling hot under his tongue. Weighing as an anvil, he sluggishly swipes his arm over his eyes, but the pull of the I.V. made him stop.

He drops his arm back to his side and breathes in thick breaths that taste of sterilization and musk, dirt and grease and pen ink that stains him. 

Dolores would want him to keep calm. It was just a nightmare, there’s nothing he can’t escape.

A hand wrestles his shoulder and he must’ve passed out again, after the nightmare, if he’s waking up again. His eyes fly open and his core tightens, his hand closing around a weapon that’s not there.

He shrugs off Allison’s hand and frowns as he rises up. His family is the only ones in the room. “Where’s my gun.” It’s not a question.

Diego, standing off to the side, sulking or standing guard, huffs, “They said they couldn’t trust you. They took m- muh- ma- my knives too.”

Five grits his teeth and shifts forward to stand up. Diego pushes himself off of the wall and grabs something out of his field of vision, but he can hear the wheels squeak as it comes closer.

_ “No,” _ he voices adamantly to the wheelchair poised innocently across from him, Diego’s lips twitching as if he’s trying to stop an upcoming smile. 

Allison forced her notepad into his face and he reads,  **YES. YOU’RE TOO WEAK. TONY AGREED.**

He’s not sure if Tony agreed that he’s too weak or that Tony agreed to be in a wheelchair. 

For all he knows, it could be both. He bites his cheek and works out a compromise in his head. 

“Alright, fine, but I want to see the rest of our siblings. Vanya, Klaus, Luther.” He eyes the room, because his closest sibling in number might already be there with them, “Ben.” 

Their faces pale. Allison reaches for his hand again, but he snaps it away, setting frustration on his features. The two of them share a look. He asks, sharply, “What are you hiding from me?”

Diego settles in front of him, down on his knees that makes Five feel like a disruptive child.

“Five.. They- They didn’t ma- muh- m- ma- mu-.” His brother closes his eyes and clenches his jaw before continuing, “Ma- make it. They turned to dust.”

His heart drops and he throws Allison’s notepad across the room, yellow paper flying before it smacks onto the shiny, glossy wall. “What the fuck are you saying?!” 

“Klaus and Vanya. Luther. They- Klaus disappeared in my  _ fucking arms _ , they’re gone! It happened everywhere, god dammit. They’re fucking gone,” Diego spits.

Five can’t hear him over Vanya’s voice, her soft whisper, her eyes peeking under her bangs. Her elegant pose as she sweeps the violin rod over the strings awkwardly, forever learning the song and dance. 

Klaus’ loud stomping as he mimics Luther, the sharpness of his collarbones when he leans over the table to steal Ben’s roll, his giggly laugh when he’s been caught doing something wrong. 

Luther’s arm bracing over his chest as he protects him from getting hit, the nervous shuffle of his legs when he asks about rock composers (as if Five would know), how he would always eat with his left hand even though he’s right handed.

_ ‘You will never escape,’  _ Vanya told him, but she wasn’t talking about spaces. She was talking about grief.

He’ll always be missing someone.

Five shakes off Allison’s trembling hand and spatial jumps to the other room, his vision blurring from either his weakness or tears.  It looks to be a debriefing room, a large table surrounded by chairs, filled with people he saw before.

A literal raccoon is in the middle of talking, “He’s bummed cause he missed. Thinks he could’ve stopped it all.”

Five glares to the strong, burly man in question while everyone reacts to his sudden appearance. He thinks he hears a gun being cocked. 

_ “You’re _ the cause of this?!” He shouts, as his hands curl into fists, his nails become weapons. Then he lunges.

And he’s not one to miss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all of your comments! They mean the absolute world to me.


	7. You might be my kid if you forgot how to kill.

Five’s asleep.

The dead and quiet sleep that chills Tony more often than not, since the only clue to his kid being alive is his chest slowly rising to the tune of his heartbeat. God, Tony can’t get over how young he looks, dark eyelashes curled up to the sky, resting eyebrows that aren’t furrowed or cheeky, and brown hair fanned out around him, half an inch thicker than before.

He’s nursing a cup of water with Pepper holding him around his waist, sleepily mumbling nonsense about going back to sleep. 

Five’s curled up in the fetus position as he holds his sister’s hand. After Nebula had gotten Tony the water, (something he told her he could himself), she left to talk to someone strangely named ‘Rocket.’ It might’ve been someone at the landing pad, but he wasn’t paying acute attention.

“He’s not your kid,” a husky voice breaks through the comforting silence that surrounded them.

Tony raises his eyes to Diego, standing and leaning over Five with his fingers halfway through the tangled locks. How that could be pleasant with the grease and dirt, he’s not sure.

He purses his lips and takes another sip before he bothers to respond. It took Five saying Diego’s name for Tony to even know what it is. “I never claimed he was. He’s ‘fifty-eight’, a big tough guy. Fights like he’d been trained his whole life.”

He’s got questions on that. No child should be pushed into the dangerous, life-threatening work of being a superhero, and the worst part is Five acting like it’s normal. The kid knows virtually nothing of what an actual childhood is.

Has he ever been taught how to ride a bike? Or has he ever tore open wrapping paper for a toy he’ll play with for a month before he loses it? His father, an eccentric billionaire explorer, with millions to throw away at a whole square block of house should have invested the money into something else besides  _ buying kids. _

Diego’s silent, than slowly drawls, “You don’t believe him.” 

Tony cocks an eyebrow up and gives the man a hard stare. Diego’s fingers finish pulling through the mess and he straightens up, the moonlight streaming through the windows gives him a silhouette of the front man in an action movie poster. Dangerous, but in a comical way.

“And you do?”

Diego clenches his jaw and jerks his head to a nod. Everything about him seems stilted, as if he’s a computer screen that keeps buffering. His tone is hard and cold, impassive, “He was right ab- abu- ou- about a lot of things. I wouldn’t see how this would be different. Time travel? I’ll believe it, cuz he’s m- muh- my brother.”

Then he shuffles into the chair beside Five and when both of them don’t speak, Tony guesses that settles the end of the conversation. Five being genuinely fifty-eight years old, even though he doesn’t understand basic things everyone knows, such as changing the sheets of a bed or brushing his teeth. It would explain his extreme intellect of quantum physics, but Tony’s sure Peter had a grasp on those as well.. 

He’s not sure what to believe anymore.

Morning is boring. Filled with tests and stuffing him with food, all of it is tedious and dreadfully taxing until they finally get to the debriefing. It’s worse than he thought it was going to be.

“Where is Thanos now?” Tony asks, his fingers curling under his chin. The pictures that flash over the holographic screen ingrain themselves to the backs of his eyelids.

Too many. It never stops. Fury. Scott. Peter. Peter, with his lovable inability to stop talking, with his endless pop culture references, and how he looked at Tony as if he hung the stars.

He hears his name being called multiple times and drags his head up from his chin to turn to the person. Steve stares expectedly at him, his puppy dog blue eyes shining in the fluorescent lighting, and Tony knows he’s missing something of the conversation, but he doesn’t care. Resentment lingers down his throat and instead of tapping into the bomb that is Steve Rogers, he throws his hand towards Thor.

“What’s his problem?” It’s been awhile, but he swore the thunder god hadn’t looked so miserable. Even more so than what he assumed grief looked like. It’s less sad and more brooding, hunched shoulders with a clenched jaw, hands forming fists. Reminds him of his teenage angst phase.

Rocket, the genetically modified raccoon that Nebula had visited in the depths of night, sighs and wears an expression that seems entirely too human for the animal. He weakly waves a paw in the direction of the moping, mute alien. “He’s bummed cause he missed. Thinks he could’ve stopped it all.”

There’s a garnish of blue that appears and even though he’s had past experience on the ship, Tony still jolts at the sudden appearance of Five. He stumbles when Rocket was talking and in a room of trained, tired and traumatized superheroes, randomly coming in is probably the worst thing you can do. Tony straightens up in his seat, but people are already reacting.

Natasha’s on her feet and pointing a pistol at Five, finger poised on the trigger. Steve has one hand out behind where his shield no doubt is, flustered speech falling from his lips, “Where did you- How? I thought you were a dimension hopper, not-“

Only Rodney doesn’t pull out a weapon. He looks too tired to attempt it.

_ “You’re  _ the cause of this?!” The kid shrieks and his eyes narrow into snake slits, slime green eyes glaring deep holes in Thor’s chest. 

His tiny body shakes with misplaced rage, because if he should be angry at anyone, it should be Tony. Tony’s fucked up since the beginning, hurt everyone he’s ever loved.

Natasha lowers her gun. There’s no threat, just a malnourished, empty child taking out his grief with a person he can blame. Yet, maybe just to prove Tony wrong, Five lunges through space and shows up on top of Thor.

He’s grasping the alien’s shoulders with his legs, as if it was a fun ride parents do with their kids by putting them on their shoulders, playing chicken in the pool. With a growl, Five digs his fingers into Thor’s eye and his hardened eyes blink quickly, most definitely wasn’t expecting it to be fake.

Steve shouts and as Tony’s struggling to stand up, the kid decides to go to hell with it and yanks the marble eye out while dragging his nails over Thor’s cheek. He sinks his long, straggly nails into the flesh and pulls. 

The god growls deep in his chest and reaches behind him, tugging the back of Five’s shirt, he’s just a simple, annoying fly buzzing in Thor’s ear. He proves it by throwing Five over his shoulder and sending the boy crashing into the thin wooden table; hard enough he worried that he’ll have to pay for a new one.

“Stop!” Steve yells, and pushes his way to the pair while Rocket laughs hysterically on the table. He claps his furry paws and raises his voice over Steve’s, “Fight! Get him!”

Five struggles up and surges forward, bringing his knee up into Thor’s crotch. Tony winces while Pepper pushes his shoulders down to get him to sit, “Tony, stop,” he grasps onto her shoulder desperately. He knows the dimension hopper can take care of himself, but fuck. He’s fighting a literal god.

Steve finally reaches them and tugs tightly on Five’s shoulders to get him back, pushing a hand on Thor’s chest. Five does something that Tony can’t see that makes pain twist up in Captain America’s face. Then, the kid is snatching a pen off the desk and lunging to stab it up in Thor’s neck.

A shot bangs through the ceiling and sends plaster raining down on them. Thor’s arm has a pen sticking out of it, thick blood dripping down to his shoulder since he’s holding Five up by the neck. “Enough,” Nathalie states to the crisp, silent room.

The door opens and the sister coming through only catches a glimpse of Five in danger before he’s in front of her, falling into her arms when his legs collapse under him. 

His eyes blink rapidly, fingers stained with red dropping to the floor as he holds the eye with his other hand, and the woman struggles to hold her baby brother up.

“Jesus,” Tony whispers, and this time Pepper helps him shuffle over to the boy. He groans and shifts, pushing at his sister’s arms as she slowly drifts down to the floor. “I’m fine, assholes,” Five carelessly lies. 

“You’re not fine.” Diego steps through, eyes of a detective scanning the room, and he clenches his jaw like the night before. “At the very least, you’re lightheaded and dizzy. Plus, maybe fighting is the worst fucking thing you could do right now?”

The sister rolls her eyes and Five scoffs, jabbing at Diego with his speech, “Coming from the vigilante. Yeah, good fucking hypocrisy there.”

She, number sister, swats at Diego’s leg and he grumbles to himself, yet still seems to understand her since he slides his arms under Five. “Does he do this often?” Pepper asks, a furrow in her brows and a concerned, motherly look on her face. 

“He was ready to attack us everyday, Peps-“ He answers the same time Diego does. Diego says, “Nowadays. He’s more prone to it.”

Tony clears his throat and Pepper (and the sister, she gives him a soft smile that makes his heart lurch for the white tape over her neck) bring him to the closest chair. Diego helps his brother into the one next to him, and Tony holds his fist out. “You got some good licks in.”

Five quirks an eyebrow and a smile twitches on his lips before he genuinely gives Tony a grin, bumping his knuckles to his. 

He’s relieved he’s okay. No obvious injuries, though they should check out his back from the nasty ram-in with the debriefing table. F.R.I.D.A.Y. should be able to remind them and also, where’s Five’s IV? Tony jokingly rolls his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation and marks that for a reminder as well.

“Are you serious, Stark? He just attacked Thor, you shouldn’t be congratulating him.” 

As usual, Steve comes barring responsibility and no fun. Tony’s lighthearted smiles drops off his face, but he still reaches out to ruffle Five’s hair in a humorous way. 

“Relax. Yeah, it was  _ extremely _ childish, but Steve, he’s just.” A kid. A traumatized old man. “Upset. And I’m sure Thor doesn’t hold any bad feelings about it. Right, man?”

The god grunts and presses a cloth on his arm, which is beginning to look like a lot more serious injury than Tony initially figured. The nail marks up his cheek are speckled with beads of blood. “..Okay, it doesn’t look good, but it was a mistake. Right, Five?”

Steve crosses his arms over his chest. He looks exactly the same, but completely different than how he was before. Before all the crap with the accords went down and Tony thought he could genuinely trust him. Maybe he never could. 

“A mistake isn’t good enough. Why is he even here? He’s a child.” Steve gestures out to Five, who scowls back with the same intensity he gave Tony when they first met, but he must be too tired to argue since he stays silent.

Captain sounds exasperated, as if he thought more of Tony, like Tony isn’t anything more than someone who gets people killed. “You can’t keep bringing kids into this. First, Parker-“

“Don’t you  _ dare _ say his name,” he spits, guilt and guilt and guilt steaming in his ears and Steve has enough sense to back down. Not today, Cap, not with the kid’s face on a holographic screen, not when it wasn’t even a month ago when he held his crumpling body in his arms.

“Fine. Maybe you can help us, you fought him.” 

Tony could almost laugh at that. Fought him? In the rocky terrain of that planet, feeling the blood pumping in his ears, he attacked with everything he has, for only a little scratch on the cheek. “Who told you that? No, I didn’t fight him. He whacked my face with a planet.”

Diego leans forward, resting his palm on the wooden table, and whispers something in Five’s ear. The air is static with tension and Five’s head drops to his chest as if he’s carrying heavy boulders across his back.

Steve nods, face etched into disappointment, and talks over him, trying to maintain order that was never there, “Okay. Did he give you any clues? Any planets, galaxies, maybe coordinates? Anything.”

Rocket laughs, a completely fake laugh that’s in hysterics, sardonic and empty. “Give the terrain a break, he was getting his ass kicked.”

“Listen to the raccoon!” Tony throws his hands up in mock joy. Natasha gives him a side-glare as she wraps Thor’s arm in cotton, soft bandages. Rocket gives him a lip-curled glare. “Nada. Nothing. You know, I had a vision of this awhile back, but didn’t want to believe it. Huh, maybe I'm psychic.”

Steve takes a step around, closer to him, with big steps and that annoying prideful expression. Discomfort shifts in Tony’s gun, a snake wrapped around his spine, puncturing him with the ability to hold grudges for two years.

“Tony, please. I need you to focus-“

“And I  _ needed _ you,” he snaps. Pepper’s head swivels and she rests a nail-bitten hand on his arm, she gives him a look with her soft eyes and hard lined mouth. She’s worried too much about him and he’s thankful as ever that she’s not stepping in. “As in past tense which I’m pretty sure trumps your bullshit.”

He shakily pushes himself up, briefly waves his hand at Pepper to show her he doesn’t need her help. He spits, anger fueling his snake, “You know what I said we needed? A suit of armor around the Earth, even if it threatened our  _ precious _ freedom~ or not. That’s what we  _ needed _ . Remember that?”

Steve shakes his head to the side, but not in disagreement. Tony can see the reflection of his blue eyes and knows that he distinctly remembers it all. The captain’s voice is soft, sad, twinging on regret, “Well that didn’t work out, did it?”

“I said we’d lose, and you said we’d do that together too. And guess what? We lost. And you weren’t there.  _ Peter’s  _ dead. I got a dimension hopping kid with his family relying on me now. There’s no more  _ time _ to rely on people who aren’t there.”

Tony takes a step forward to his old teammate, his old friend, someone he thought he could call family. “There’s no going back, Cap. And whose fault is that?”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone seems to want Five to fight someone. First Nebula, now Thor, well I hope I have you a good fight scene.. then angst. Oops.


	8. You look like my father if he hated his monocle as much as he hated me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spelled Natalie wrong like five times.  
> Because Five’s not sure on names:  
> Natasha- Natalie, Blondie  
> Steve- Captain, Captain Steve

The knowledge that he’s surrounded by people makes ants crawl over his skin. He’s drowning in the feeling of electric bugs digging into his flesh and he deeply hates the flinch he forced back every time a person crowds his personal space.

After Tony had gone for Cap Steve’s throat, promptly collapsed from it, and had to be carried to his room, Five reluctantly stayed in the ‘debriefing’ room. The blonde haired woman with a muscular build, eyes that reflect his, told him with a blunt voice that they needed answers. Her weight was perfectly balanced and despite the lines of exhaustion under her eyes, she held herself powerfully and light on her toes. He’d have to keep an eye out for her.

Everyone left as well. Carol, the flaming woman who he still doesn’t trust to be alone with, and Thor, as the traitorous, shameful, pathetic excuse for a hero was called, and even his siblings. Allison wrote that she was going to get him something to eat and Diego disappeared when Five blinked.

But he guesses that he can never get alone time to himself.

Bruce meekly enters the room and in his hands, he holds a small paper cup and the steel handle of the I.V. that Five recklessly took out of his body. There’s a water bottle tucked in Bruce’s armpit and Five scrutinizes the cap of it, dissecting it to see if it’s been tampered with. The doctor walks across the room and around the table, adjusting his glasses frequently.

“Five,” Bruce says, setting the cup down on the wood and he can count the chalky and colorful pills piling up in their fragile prison, climbing over each other to get to the top. “I’m gonna need to put your I.V. in, and you’re gonna have to swallow these. Tony’s orders.”

How did Vanya feel when she was first told to swallow? When she was handed her pills to cure her ‘illness’. He could imagine it, her soft eyes gazing up at Reginald with nothing but pure belief in them, he’s her _father—_ someone she could trust.

What would happen if Five went back in time and slapped the pills away? If he let Vanya out? If he killed Reginald? Only good, he supposes. Anything is better than that monster suffocating them.

Lingeringly, Five lets his hand cup around the water bottle before he spins the cap off. Could he trust the pills or are they trackers? He stares through the smushy glasses Bruce wears and asks, “What are they?”

There’s no hesitation in his answer, yet not automatic like he rememorizes it as a script. Less reason to be worried. “Vitamins, some protein supplements, things to get your body back in order. You’re pretty malnourished.”

Five can argue that _this_ isn’t malnourishment. Being malnourished is not having enough energy to drag himself under the broken shade of a tilted, cracked wall that was inches away. It was desperately digging his fingers into the dirt until they shed blood and forcing them deeper, sucking on a heat-packed stone until he could find a worm.

This wasn’t it. This wasn’t crying on his siblings’ graves cause his stomach was so hollow, excruciatingly empty, and tugging on his hair because their bodies are right under, enough meat to last him a week if he only eats the salvageable unspoiled parts. (He never did it, never ate anyone, and he’s not sure if he’s able to even handle the smell of cooking, red meat now. Not after the smell of rotting bodies clung to the threads of his clothes and the tips of his hair).

Five tips the pills in his mouth one at a time and drinks them down with cool water that refreshes his dry, caked mouth. When he finishes, sets down the paper, wrinkly cup on the table, Bruce leaves him be without another word.

It seems awkwardness got to them both.

“Hey, you,” barks the raccoon, talking animated raccoon, who sits on the table, cross legged as it is a perfectly normal thing for an animal to do. His breath stinks of stale alcohol and Five debates asking him where he got it. “What’s your deal?”

“My family’s dead,” he answers bluntly and waits for the flood of pity to drown him.

“Mine too, it doesn't make you special.”

Five grins, snake like with a dimple popping from his cheek. He didn’t think he would enjoy having a conversation with an animal, but that was before he got his whole world turned upside down from his own doing. He tilts his head ever so slightly to the side, and asks with calm on his tongue, “Where’d you find the alcohol?”

The raccoon grins back at him, folded lips over snarling teeth.

Getting drunk isn’t what he has in mind, so he makes sure to keep his intake to a minimum— something that is utterly frustrating considering his tolerance is _nothing_ compared to what it used to be. Dolores would be upset that he’s even drinking, but she’s not here to judge.

The drink burns pleasantly down his throat to his stomach. Before he knows it, Five’s licking off the last few drops of his drink and he subtly pushes the wide, whiskey glass to Rocket. Apparently, the alcohol here isn’t as good as neighboring planets, but it’s all they have.

He’s not sure what to think of that and it’s definitely a problem for future-him, a him that’s not sipping on iced whiskey that makes his brain all fuzzy.

“Rocket, I’m impressed. I leave you alone for five seconds and you’ve already gotten the child drunk.”

Five brushes the back of his hand against his eye to stop the tears that threaten to pour over, he’s always more emotional when he drinks, but this time he _swears_ he’s only tipsy. He turns his head toward the doorway and sees his sister standing alongside the blondie from before.

Allison holds a plate of.. something round and crispy and her fingers hold it as if she’s hanging for her life, so tightly he’s concerned. Blondie, or Natalie as Tony offhandedly referenced her, has a loose grip on Allison’s notepad.

“Hey kiddo,” Natialie calls, her tone light and airy, holding one hand up in greeting. She drops the notepad on the table with too much strength for there not to something lurking underneath. Something must’ve happened with her and Allison.

She slides into the seat that Diego was occupying before and swipes Five’s glass with quick, experienced hands. Right under his eyes, she downs the whiskey like it’s a shot then has the audacity to licks her lips afterwards.

“Aren’t you a little too young to be drinking this kind of hard stuff?” She asks, propping her elbows on the table, seemingly unfazed by his glaring scowl.

“Take something from me again and you’ll meet the same fate as your friend.”

Allison slides the pen out from the spine and flips two pages of the notebook over, pressing the ink down to on the paper. **FOR YOU. EAT.**

Begrudgingly, he takes the plate from her and sets it down. He sighs and takes a bite of the strange looking food, though he would have ate it even if it’s covered in dirt and shaped like a human brain. His teeth crunch down and he has an inkling he knows what this is.

“Hey, he asked for the shit! You should be praising me for being a gentlemen!” Rocket shouts at Natalie, who watches with the same unfazed, bored body language. She responds with something bland and uninteresting, so he tunes them out

“Is this fried chicken?” He chews on the meat as he converses, absolutely not giving a shit about one of the rules his deadbeat father gave them.

Allison looks disgusted at his lack of manners and takes the second to scribble with extra strength so that ink bleeds through the page. **IT’S CHICKEN NUGGETS.**

He racks his brain to try to see if he’s ever heard of these oddly scrumptious abominations, humming through his teeth as he tears at the food. Oh, he’s sure he has, during his time as the Commission, his target had been a little girl with buck teeth and shaggy black hair. He had watched her scarf down the chicken nuggets at one of those chain fast foods, around 1983, before he followed her to the playset then got her alone. He shot her in the middle of her forehead, right between her thin eyebrows and messy bangs.

It almost makes him stop eating, but he knows better than to waste food.

“So,” Natalie starts with, as others trickle in. Bruce, Thor (with a new bandage wrapped around his bicep where the puncture wound was), Nebula, the Captain guy, Carol, and lastly, Tony. He looks to be Pepperless.

Nebula stations herself to the other side of Five and give a small fist bump to Rocket. Tony, wrecked and still wildly unstable, collapses into the chair across from him as Five’s deciding how he would take down Captain in the most efficient way.

Thor stands in front of an exit and Five find that laughable, it’s like they’re afraid he’s going to run. He finishes the last of the chicken nuggets and licks his fingers, giving Allison a short nod.

“We want to hear your story-“

“And I’ve already given it to you,” Tony cuts in, leaning back in his stiff plastic chair and raising his eyebrows over sleek sunglasses. He must’ve put them on to hide the dangerously dark bags under his eyes and distract from his scarily similar sunken in cheeks.

The food churns uneasily in Five’s stomach, but he ignores it. It’ll stay, even if he has to force it.

Captain Steve scoffs, “You left important stuff out, Stark,” and presses a hand flat on the table. He earns Five’s gaze on his muscular build and broad shoulders, easy to swing onto and slide a knife over his neck.

“Five, that’s your name, right? Do you mind explaining some stuff to us? We just want to get some things straight.”

His kind voice doesn’t betray the tension lined over him, the hard steel in his eyes, and how his eyes flick quickly down to his weapon hidden under the table. Five knows the body language because he wore it when he asked the little girl with the shaggy black hair to step outside for a moment to see his dog.

When he doesn’t say anything (too busy thinking of her blood splattering against the concrete grey wall), Captain Steve continues, “How did you get here? You can travel across dimensions, but why here? Why now?”

“Where’s Diego?” He asks in return. He’s not paranoid, he’s not suffocatingly clingy, but losing another sibling would certainly be annoying (especially since he only has two left).

Nebula presses something hard, rigid, and cold to his side. It’s discreet enough that he’s confident she means not to get caught, so he drops his hand under the table and she lets go of a weapon. With a soft grasps, he could tell it’s a gun.

He’s decreasingly gotten less trustful of the company Tony keeps.

“He’s looking into something for me,” Carol replies evenly, staring back into his eyes and not looking away first. Five checks the bullet amount as fast as he’s able to do, just in case. He’ll put a bullet in Thor first, then Steve.

Maybe he should give the gun to Allison. He doesn’t want her to get in the cross-fire.

“Can we stop? This isn’t important.” Tony smooths his hands over his head. “Not the Go Go Diego part, yeah he’s an ass, but little Five should know where he is. I mean, this whole interrogating shit. He’s _not_ a threat.”

Steve, Captain, whatever the fuck his name is, straightens up. Five could’ve bet that he would’ve been defensive of that. “We don’t know that,” he seems to stress, his words carrying too much depth, “This child could be lying for all we know.”

Allison holds up her notebook, but it takes Nebula barking for everyone to look. **WE COME IN PEACE. RAN AWAY FROM CERTAIN DEATH.** **FIVE IS JUST**

She angles it in a way that makes it hard for him to read, but he doesn’t fight to see what she wrote about him. Whatever it is, it’s probably true.

Tony raises his hand to Allison and states, has the audacity to state like it’s law, “He’s a kid, Steve. Thirteen years old. He’s trustworthy and I need you to trust me on that.”

Five grabs the drink Natiale took from him and rises from his seat, raising his arm and chucking it with all his strength at the wall. He feels a wonderfully amount of satisfaction from watching it break. “For the last time, I’m fifty-eight. I time-traveled and got stuck in this body. In the words of Number Four, _get with the fucking program.”_

There’s a tense silence that settles over the group like a blanket of fallen snow. No one moves besides Rocket and he only sits down from the table. It’s warily quiet.

Carol breaks it, pushing past Steve to stare down Five again. He can’t remember who looked away the last time. “Guys, why are we bothering to track Thanos down when this old man can just turn back time before the snap happened. Give you guys another shot.”

“Holy shit.”


	9. My brother reminds me of myself; careless, reckless, and alone.

_ May 13th; Sixteen Days After The Snap _

 

The last thing he remembers is through an ashy lense, squeezing his brothers’ hands while the world was in the process of being crumpled under rubble caked in flames. Pieces of a forgotten moon highlighting in flames from plowing through the atmosphere at extreme rates. He could have tasted the heat on his tongue if he dared to and the sweat sliding down from his forehead reminded him of the boiling days in the sun practicing throwing knives against flocks of birds.

The cruel presence of his father standing in the shade, hands poised over a long, wicked cane was replaced by the widening eyes and clinging hands of his runaway, trapped brother. The fear of disappointing the man who hated him was shifted into the numb fear that he was going to die. 

At least he’d be with Eudora.

When Number Two stirs awake, the first thing coming to him is the nausea. It rages in his stomach, splashes against the walls, and he swallows the bitterness with resigned rejection of vomiting. He could do that later. He forces his eyes open even though the brightly, intense shine of the sun declines it and realizes with a jolt that he’s not holding onto his siblings anymore. He realizes he’s not in Kansas anymore. 

He bites back a groan beacause only Klaus really would’ve laughed at a stupid joke like that. 

Klaus (to his relief) is curled up on the ground maybe ten feet away from him, wearing the same army coded vest and pants he had on during the whole mess of teleportation and time travel in the theater. He doesn’t seem to be injured, just asleep, so Diego doesn’t put him on top of the priority list. (Only second to figuring out where they are.)

Diego settles onto his elbows, propping himself up, and views his surroundings with the eye of a detective (who may have gotten kicked out of the academy). He’s in a forest, surrounded by moss clinging to logs the length of buses, trees that rise above the clouds and gare down at him with dangling branches, and an unsettling amount of dust where he’s currently laying. It doesn’t appear to be anywhere else except settled on the ground near a log.

He pushes himself up onto his feet, slowly, taking his time to shift onto his knees before rising, but his extra caution is in vein when his legs give out on him. It must be his lucky day because a headache starts to pound as soon as his knees hit the dirt. Pillows of the dust rise up around him.

Bringing an arm to cover his mouth, Diego settles down and tries to keep the bile from spilling out of his mouth. Dizziness strucks him over the head, it’s a worse feeling than all of the times Eudora tasered him. At least those were fun, a chance to talk to her and relish in the feeling of his attention-seeker tendances being satisfied when her puckered lips and brown eyes focus on him.

She’s alive, right? Five said they’re traveling back in time, so there’s no doubt that she’s not dead anymore, but if this is the past, just  _ when _ are they? Where the fuck are the others? It can’t just be Klaus and him, Diego knows that for certain. 

His body demands for rest in the form of a dry mouth and sweat clinging to his clothes, but he squishes the urge down. If he can’t walk, then he might as well crawl. They did it often enough in exercises (in the police academy, not the PTSD inducing Umbrella one). Diego pushes himself towards his brother. 

When he places his hand on Klaus’ shoulder, the medium jolts back and his eyes fly open, as big and wide as flying saucers. “Keep calm, I don’t know where we are,” Diego orders, as he takes a shuffle back to not be in Klaus’ space too much. But Four has other plans when his hand latches around Diego’s wrist, long fingers curling over his tan skin. 

“Vanya?” He croaks out, his voice rusty and croaking, and Diego shrugs. Not sure where she is, but hopefully somewhere safe and nearby, specifically nowhere near Luther. Klaus chuckles and the anxiety stops moving around as much in Diego, because if his not anymore junkie brother’s laughing, then he’s okay. 

“I guess holding hands didn’t do much good-” Klaus stops in the middle of pushing himself up onto his butt and freezes in place, a peculiar expression plastered on his face. His eyes are glossy, two hazel marbles. “No. Oh, no, no, no. Diego-  _ fuck.” _

He frowns and looks over Klaus again, still seeing only the tacky clothing and new tattoos. He’s not seeing anything that would cause his brother to cry out. He promises, “Calm down, man. You’re fine.”

Ironically, that’s when he saw Klaus’ leg crumble into dust. It doesn’t slow down, jumping from leg to leg like a contagious disease, and Diego scoops Klaus into his arm as if he could project his brother from his own body breaking down into grains of sand-colored particles. He’s dealt with time-traveling assassins, this- this is just a fluke.

His younger brother settles a hand on Diego’s chest. (They may be the same age, but Four has always been the younger one. The one Two has to look out for, to make sure he’s doing his schoolwork and not high during training, the one he has to lie about to Father. The only one he stayed in contact with because as much as he tolerated Allison and Vanya, loathed Luther, they don’t need to be checked up on. Every overdose call he heard in the police radio made him angry as much as scared.)

“Two, buddy, don’t go anywhere, okay?” There’s tears in Klaus’ eyes and they drip silently down. Diego’s not sure how this could have happened so fast. “I’ll be back. She doesn’t like me much. Rude, right?” 

Klaus’ chest is disappearing. Diego can’t form words in his mouth as hard as he tries. He wants to say he will. That of course he’d stay for his brother. They’re family. He loves him.  _ He loves him. _ But he doesn’t get a chance.

There’s no more of Number Four to be able to listen. 

As Diego stares at the dust coating his arms and chest, over his legs, he feels a sick sense of irony. The great Umbrella Academy, not even together even in the end, and if he waits for himself to crumple, he would never admit it. 

(He misses Mom. Did she become a ghost? He wishes he had enough sense to ask before.)

There’s the sound of incoming footsteps and if he weren’t nauseous, swaying on his knees, sick with grief, he would’ve jumped up with a knife. He can’t. A person enters his field of vision, a tall, powerful woman with dark, stunning skin and an outfit as strange as his old fighting uniform. She carries a spear stained with blue at its tip and points it at him, her eyes narrowed into puffy lines. She probably cried recently. 

“Who are you? What is your purpose in Wakanda?” She shouts. 

Diego looks up at her and replies honestly, “I don’t know. I just ssh- sssha- sho- showed up, but-” At this point, he swallows, unsure if he could trust the last words of his brother who always lied, but ultimately, he continues, “My b- b- bra- brother sa- said he would be- be back.”

He had enough ability to take out a knife and throw it into her throat if she tried anything, yet he’s so tired of death. Eudora wouldn’t want more blood soaked into the lines of his palms. The stranger doesn’t attempt anything though and instead does something he wouldn’t have been able to predict; she sits down, her long legs folding under each other. 

“I’ll wait as well, then.”

They wait as the sun goes down, sitting across from each other with her spear laid next to her and his knives untouched in his harness. They don’t speak while the insects come buzzing out of the holes they hide in. 

His eyes grow heavy and his fatigue drapes itself over his back, until he can’t fight the sickness anymore and succumbs to sleep. Eudora would’ve taken off her jacket and draped it over him, leaving a hot coffee in a thermal cup behind. Mom would’ve carried him to bed.

The pine needles and dust are soft enough.

Diego wakes up in a different place with cuffs around his wrists. Of course. He was an idiot to drift off in a strange place with a stranger watching over him, his lack of energy be damned. 

He’s sitting upright in a chair, with bounds around his wrist to the arms of the comfortable, plush chair, and in a room with a tall ceiling and cold air. It’s plain, white walls with no other furniture. Is this a jail cell? It’s ten times better than the one he was kept in before.

The door slides open and a woman walks into the room. She isn’t the one he spent the night with, he can’t recognize her from anything at all. She has a headpiece on with a matching dress, she moves as if she’s flowing through water.

“I am Queen Ramonda.” She smiles softly, warmth radiating from her being. “You must be a Hargreeves. We got a call from Steve Rogers asking to be informed of your, or your siblings, whereabouts.”

He clears his throat. Queen. Is he in England? “Name’s Diego.” He shifts in his chair and highlights the situation he’s in by rattling his wrists against the padded cuffs.

The Queen nods and clasps her hands in her front. “Some of my people were weary about you. You appeared in a place.. that contains too much bloodshed. It was simply a precaution.”

He mumbled, “Precaution, my ass,” and if she hears him, she doesn’t show it. She glides forward and with a snap of her fingers, the cuffs disappears. He may have gawked a little.

This Steve guy has apparently been asking about him and his siblings, maybe he’s heard something? Diego pushes himself up and asks, “Has this guy found any of my siblings?”

She nods and takes a step back before she turns, strolling to the door. Her voice is light and airy, or maybe that’s him projecting. She reminds him of Mom. “Allison Hargreeves was found at the compound. Do you wish to talk to her?”

He blurts out yes before he even considers it.

Queen Ramonda leads him to another room and stands in the corner, waving her hand up and around as if it would do anything. It does, though, and a fucking hologram appears in front of him. Automatically, he takes a cautious step back.

He’s only heard about them in the books Five used to read. 

A man stands there, glimmering blue, with a scruffy beard and tired blue eyes. “Queen?” He calls, and she steps into sight, smiling softly.

“Diego is found. He wants to talk with his sister.”

The man nods and disappears before Diego could make sense of him. Of any part of this. It feels like a fever dream he’s trapped in, alone, and frightened. He’s still woozy on his feet.

But then Allison appears and she looks okay. She looks the same, still with the awful bandage around her throat, and a waxed expression of misery and grief. When she sees him, her eyes welled up in tears. Shakily, she shows him the word she written on her notebook.

**OTHERS?**

His expression paling tells her some, but not all, so he forces the words out, struggling to admit it, “Four- Four’s- Four’s g- go- F- Four’s gon- gone.”

She covers her face in her hands as she cries. He wishes he could say something to make her feel better, to bring Klaus back, to make this right.

But Number Two has never been good with words.


	10. You look like my kid if all of his love turned into hate.

“Holy shit,” Five’s brother exclaims in a deadpan tone, appearing in the doorway as if he’s a ghost lurking around the hallways of the compound. 

He’s an unsure man with a speech disorder and Tony doesn’t know the guy long enough to decide if he likes him or not, especially after the disaster of a late night conversation.

That conversation from the other night lurks at him and when he turns back at Five, closing his eyes behind his shades, he could almost picture an older man. Long, shaggy white hair and a wrinkled face, parched lips as dry and cracked as the desert ground. 

Something deep within him rumbles. When he opens his eyes, seeing that youthful face, devoid of the effects of age, devoid of the growth of hair on his chin, it’s difficult. It’s unsettling. 

His fucked up brain connects Five to Peter, appearance wise to the same way they bite their cheek when problem solving. Long eyelashes framing big doe eyes— but Five wears an expression that shows the horrors he’s been through, his face entirely too stern and hard for the age he appears.

Time travel is impossible, it’s something Tony has always assured himself in, but Five being alive is proof of the impossible. Dimension traveling, that’s unheard of but not scarily wrong, and Five wears both like they’re gloves on his hands.

“The last time I tried to time travel, I ended up going into another  _ dimension!” _ Five’s in the middle of explaining (shouting), his hands slamming over the table to punctuate his point. 

“And the first time you did it, you ended up looking like a member of Kid’s Bop,” Tony hears himself saying and it doesn’t surprise him that his big mouth is running again. Steve and Five both wear the matching blank face that showcases the ultimate ‘I don’t understand that reference.’

Diego cuts in, the same scowl he’s had on his face since Tony met him. If he were a doll, it would be his permanent feature, painted on and glossed. All the kids would say he’s ugly. “It’s too dangerous for Five. He can’t d- do- do- do it. We’ll figure something else ou- out.”

Natasha shakes her head mutely. Carol reaches over and clasps her hands around Allison’s notebook, tilting the edge over so she can see the cursive. Allison, that’s the sister’s name, Number Three- the one, one with the rumors. Tony remembers now, but he’s not sure how someone could make rumors come true when they can’t even talk.

Sign language? He glances his tired eyes over to her and the white gauze gleams on her dark skin, as conspicuous as a drop of blood is on a black ground of still snow.

Carol reads the written words out loud, becoming Allison’s own interpreter, “Five made it once before when he showed up in the courtyard?”

Five groans and runs his hand through his hair, the dirty strands catching on his fingers. “That’s what Tony was talking about,” he mutters, tight-lipped and tense. “I time traveled from 1963 to 2019, but my consciousness shifted back into my thirteen year old body. There was a  _ mess up _ in the equations.”

“Could you fix whatever you messed up on?” She asks, innocently, but not as innocent as one would think, and Five’s lips press tighter together, a thin white line across his face.

He looks older like that.

He takes in a long suffering breath and squints his eyes at her. She can be carrying the plague for how he looks at her, but the same could be said the other way around; she views him as if he’s an impatient child.

Tony’s beginning to realize that’s wrong.

“45 years in  _ hell _ and that was the closest equation I came up with. And that was before I knew I could travel across dimensions!” Five takes the plate he ate off of and throws it over his shoulder. Thor catches it with one hand.

Tony drums his fingers on the table as he thinks. He guesses he should accept the truth, Five’s a time traveler, but a.. failure of one. 

He clears his throat, the attention of the room crowding around him, and he casts out an idea, “What if it wasn’t just you, but a machine? It’ll give you enough power to transport yourself and a couple others.”

Diego coughs into his fist. “Buddy, are you saying you’re gonna invent a  _ time machine _ ?”

Tony grins as Five stares at him with wide, unblinking green eyes.  _ Peter _ , his mind supplies him with a memory of the fifteen year old looking up at him with the same expression. 

He shifts in his seat, “It’s a lot more complicated than that, monkey brain. The machine wouldn’t be doing the time travel, that would be Five. It would just.. help with it. Think of it as training wheels.”

Allison’s head drops into her hands. All around Tony, there’s skeptical faces, all seem unsure of this insane, improbable plan. He doesn’t particularly mind though, because if he built Iron Man in a cave, then this will be a piece of cake. (He hopes.)

“Alright,” Natasha breaks the thick, persistent silence. She smiles, just a sly of the lips, and the tension pops. Bruce nods as he adjusts his glasses, giving Tony the sign of a willing, cooperative, and genius partner. Carol shrugs one shoulder, but with a smirk on her face. 

Steve sighs, heavily, resignedly, and the blue of his eyes looks over to Diego. God, Tony can’t handle it if the two of those become friends. They’re probably start a fan club on how reckless and irresponsible, not to forget delusional and unstable, he is.

“Five?” Diego prompts. 

The space jumper’s expression goes through a variety of emotions before his lips finally sour and he gives a curt nod. “It’s not going to be pretty,” he promises, seeming as if he made sure to give an extra hard glare to his siblings. 

Tony cracks his knuckles. “I don’t need pretty, just the right playlist.” The snort Five gives in response shows just how he thinks of that, which is fine. It’s not like they’ve playing Back To The Future with billions of people’s lives, or that they’re dooming themselves into living in the apocalypse if this goes wrong.

Oh, wait. They are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s too many characters.. Aa. Am I proud of this chapter? Nope. I’ve been struggling to write this for 2 weeks, but I hoped y’all like it anyways. T-T
> 
> Also: it’s my birthday!!!!


	11. You give me flashbacks to when I was happy.

“This is so  _ stupid,” _ he murmurs under his breath, words thick with the memories of trapped in the apocalyptic wasteland, spending years trying to right a complex, aggravating equation and when he finally got it, it turns out to have been wrong somewhere in the long line of numbers. When he tried to take his siblings back in time with him, he dealt with half-baked problems and the solution ended up being in an alternate universe with half his siblings dying. 

Pepper, who unfortunately landed the prime position of showing him his room and hearing his rambling mutters of time, looks down at him with a small smile. He doesn’t understand why she would be smiling, but he gives her a tight lipped one back. She stops looking at him after that.

What was Tony thinking? Of course, Five’s going to go along with it because he needs his siblings back more than he needs air. The whole situation just seems so.. impulsive. Not thought out. 

(Dolores would call him a hypocrite for thinking that and he would tell her to back off, then she would ask if the apocalypse taught him nothing. God, he misses her.)

“Here’s your room. Down the hall is Allison and Diego’s right across. If you need anything, just call.” Pepper presses a button and the door slides open, showing them a bland room but filled with enough stuff that it looks homely. He can’t see a phone in there from where he’s standing, but that would make sense because who keeps a phone in their room? Maybe she means to yell as a call.

Five takes a step forward then notices how she’s staring at him again. He stops and stares back, his head cocked towards her while his chest stays forward. What does she want from him? Pepper sighs, her watery blue eyes finally looking away when she fiddles with the ring on her finger.

“I know you’re fifty-eight, but you look so young. And.. I’ve just begun to realize that I want kids.” She chuckles sourly, “Tony would never go for that. He’d never want to settle down… He’s always got to save the world.”

Five stands there with his arms awkwardly hanging by his sides and a look of befuddlement on his face. He may just be the  _ worst _ one of his siblings to talk about feelings with and that includes emotionally constipated Diego and “Punching Solves Everything” Luther. Pepper doesn’t seem to particularly mind though.  

Really, Allison is the one who has an actual child aka the one who would most relate to whatever maternal issues Pepper seems to be having. Yet, he’s stuck with her. Cautiously, he timidly asks, “Have you talked about it with him? He’s probably not as much of a hero type as you think, he’s just the one who does it cause no one else does.”

Just like Five. 

He’s the one who stood up to their father because someone has to. He hung around Vanya and Ben because as much as he cares for the others, the higher numbers need more support. (He left too early for Four and he cursed himself day and night after reading Vanya’s book for not paying more attention to the “personal training” Klaus suffered.) 

Pepper nods, but she doesn’t look that convinced. “I think we have to focus on the present right now,” she says, forced and stunted as if she’s regretting confessing her baby issues with a stranger, and Five can’t say he never tried. 

“He’s burdened himself with so much. And, I know we don’t know each other and I can’t possibly ask you for any favors, but… you spent several weeks with him. If anyone can get through him, it’s you.”

Guess she’s not done, he bitterly thinks. Five can’t say he’s exactly close with Tony. He’s maybe started to trust him enough that he’s willing to go along with his reckless plans. Pepper slides her hand through her hair, breathing in slowly before she continues, “Please look after him. I can only hover so much until he gets annoyed.”

She chuckles sourly before she leaves with a shawl of awkwardness over her shoulders. Her heels give him a flashback to the last time he saw Grace. He shakes his head as he listens to the tapping of her shoes slowly fade. 

“I guess it’s time to start working,” he mutters with no real thought to who he’s saying it to. Five settles into the room, checking all the exits and the possibility for any attacks. He doesn’t think Thor will come in to get payback, but you can never be certain with trainwrecks. 

He sinks his hand into his pocket and pulls out the fake eye, twisting it side to side as he got a good look at it. He’ll… just keep this until his siblings are returned. Until this whole ordeal is over. (He’s not enabling his addiction. He wants nothing more to do with apocalypses and death.)

Five shoves it back down. There’s slow rapping at his door followed by a quick pound to the wood. Of course, he had closed his door shut tightly after Pepper left, so it’s not as surprising as seeing his remaining siblings gathered outside the door. 

Out of seven, there’s only three left. It seems pathetic when you think about it.

“Hey,” Diego pushes past him without asking to come in and Allison doesn’t look guilty for immediately following him and disregarding Five’s personal boundaries. He glares at their backs, allowing himself to look out and check to see if anyone’s followed them, before closing the door as it should be. 

“What do you want?” He bluntly asks, stalking closer to them and scowling at how comfortable they’ve made themselves. Allison lays back against the pillows on the bed, her legs stretched out in front of her with her classy heels dropped down on the carpet, while Diego’s fiddling with the screen hooked up on the wall.

Allison’s smile is mischievous and after a second, she holds up her notepad.  **We’re gonna relax.** He can’t help but scoff, shaking his head at the absolute idiocy that his siblings present. 

“I have work to do,” Five reminds her, to her response of eyerolls and disrespect. He forgot how childish she can be. Diego lets out a whoop of success. He holds a thin long remote in one hand and showcases the screen off with another. Oh. It’s a… T.V.?

His expression must show his curiosity, because Diego lights up with the chance to explain. (to brag). “The televisions here are super thin and big. Their technology is so advanced, they have things like smartphones and holograms.”

Their sister taps on his shoulder and he glances back over to her, reading her words,  **Watching a movie.**

He purses his lips and settles on the end of the bed, the comforter pressing into his palms. Diego nods and points to the notebook as if it made perfect sense, talking with confidence, “Movies have gotten real, so we’re gonna watch some. Five, your pick, Fast & Furious 7 of The Lion King with real lions.” 

Five scrunches his eyebrows together. “They got real lions to act?” He asks dubiously, to which both Diego and Allison nod excitedly. He ponders the implications he would be if he… doesn’t work. How much time would that take away if he simply took a break?

If he rested, would anything bad happen? Those minutes he took away by sitting down with his family and watching a movie he’s probably going to hate aren’t going to matter in the end. Work isn’t on a deadline.

He chews on his cheeks before sighing. “The lion one. I better not be disappointed.” 

Five kicks his shoes off and gives Allison a look when she opens up her arms. He may be agreeing to bonding, but to be cuddled like a three year old after a bad dream? That’s pushing it way too far. He settles for leaning against the headboard beside her, though he shifts the pillows away. Diego, looking smug like when he used to get the last cookie, selects the movie in some technology way that Five’s yet to learn.

It’s infuriating until he realizes that it’s pointless to be jealous over not knowing something. After the movie starts, with an opening scene that cause Five’s mouth to drop, Number Two pulls a chair from the small table and sits down.  It’s nice. Watching a movie isn’t something he’s ever been able to do (excluding that time he murdered a couple in the cinema during the 60s). He’s able to relax and be able to shoulder off the misery he holds for one second. 

It’s not everything, there’s no loud talking from Klaus or shy giggles form Vanya when something funny happens, but it’s enough. Resting his arm against Allison and seeing Diego laughing from time to time is enough. He loves them. He doesn’t know how he would function if they were gone too. 

He doesn’t have to think about that, Five tells himself, as he reaches over and takes Diego’s hand in his. His brother startles and blinks at him with wide eyes, before he gives a soft smile and relaxes again. They have each other and for now… 

It’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so late. I've been dealing with some things, but I hope this fluff makes up for it! Also, this might b the only chapter where Tony and Five don't interact?? Woah.


End file.
